Challenger
Cedar, green tea and a marmalade edge. The most versatile English hop: enough alpha to bitter, enough character to finish.
Alpha acid
6.5-9%
6.5% - 9%
Against every variety on this site
Typical use
Dual
Enough alpha to bitter and enough character to finish the same beer.
At 60 minutes
27 IBU
For 30 g at the mid-range alpha in a 20 litre batch at 1.050, by Tinseth
Origin
England
Publicly released in 1972
Where it belongs
- Best Bitter
- English Porter
- British Brown Ale
If you cannot get it
Ranked by how convincingly each one stands in. A substitution changes the beer; matching the alpha acid only matches the bitterness, not the aroma.
Also often suggested: Northern Brewer. Not yet in this reference.
Buying it
Hops are perishable and alpha acid falls with warm storage. Buy vacuum-packed pellets, check the crop year and the alpha figure printed on the pack, and keep them in a freezer. A pack stored in a warm cupboard for a year can have lost a third of its bitterness, which is the usual reason a repeated recipe comes out tasting flat.
Find Challenger pelletsAn affiliate search link, scoped to this variety rather than to a guessed listing.
Recipes on this site that use it
More from England
East Kent Goldings
4-6.5%Honey, earth and lavender. The English aroma hop, and the reason a best bitter smells like a pub.
Fuggle
3.5-5.5%Woody, minty and grassy. Older and earthier than Goldings.
Target
9.5-12.5%Intense, sagey and resinous. The English high-alpha hop, and pungent enough that most brewers keep it in the kettle.
Bramling Cross
5-8%Blackcurrant and lemon, unusually fruity for an English variety. A Goldings crossed with a wild Manitoban hop.
First Gold
6-9%Marmalade and spice, essentially a dwarf Goldings with more alpha. Works as a single-hop English beer from kettle to dry hop.
Progress
5-7.5%Softer and slightly sweeter than Fuggle, with a honeyed, herbal quality. Bred as a Fuggle replacement and generally better than it.